Wednesday, December 31, 2008

I am borrowing this title from another blog, Ford Denison's This Week in Evolution blog. Back only one year ago he published a post called "This year in intelligent design" and showed how little actual work is being done in the field of Intelligent Design, like we didn't already know that. It was an interesting post none-the-less.

Well he's updated it for 2008 and once again searched scientific sources looking for all the work the Discovery Institute and their ilk claims to be doing. Funny thing is in the 2008 installment of "This year in intelligent design" he found . . .nothing. Now please remember he was searching in scientific journals, so you can see why that is the case. He did provide a link over to Allen McNeil's blog and said that ID "never got off the ground as a scientific field and now it seems to be dead even as a religious movement."

Elsewhere on the blogsphere, PZ Myers, over on Pharyngula posted this one, so I had to follow up. According to Casey Luskin, (DI mouthpiece) a Bicycle is Irreducibly Complex! Huh? Well read for yourself, here is the original quote off the Discovery Institute's blog:

"For example, consider again the bicycle. Bicycles have two wheels. Unicycles, having only one wheel, are missing an obvious component found on bicycles. Does this imply that you can remove one wheel from a bicycle and it will still function? Of course not. Try removing a wheel from a bike and you'll quickly see that it requires two wheels to function. The fact that a unicycle lacks certain components of a bicycle does not mean that the bicycle is therefore not irreducibly complex."

It's part of an article doing their best to obfuscate the Dover trial, 3 years now and they are still backtracking and trying to marginalize something. An aside to Casey and his buds . . . if you are still re-positioning yourself after 3 years, you cannot expect anyone to take you seriously. Give up on Dover and move on.

But back to the Bike. So you take off a wheel, does it still function? As a bicycle, no! By definition a bicycle requires two wheels (hence the name BI-cycle). But does that mean a bike is irreducibly complex? Now the way I remember Behe trying to explain it in Darwin's Black Box. It might not function as a bicycle, but how many of us used bicycle parts for something else? I helped build go-carts as a kid using bicycle parts. I've seen single wheeled bicycles converted to generators when placed on an appropriate stand and connected to a generator. One friend used to only watch TV powered form her bike. It's been years since I've thought about her, at the rate she was losing weight, she should be just about gone by now!

Let's look at the evolution of the bicycle, from Wikipedia. Bicycles didn't spring into existence, but have a long history as adaptations from various forms of three and four wheeled carts of the time period.

So what have we learned? That once again something proposed, by one of the pseudo-scientists at the Discovery Institute, as irreducibly complex is nothing of the sort. It didn't spring into being, but evolved over a long period of time. It might no longer function as a bicycle with a wheel missing, but it can certainly have other functions. In other words, Casey flunks again.

Welcome to my little corner of the Internet

This blog is more a way for me to clarify my own thinking and opinions more than for any other purpose. I like writing things down, having links to source material, and offering my own $.02. I find a blog let's me do that. I encourage comments and emails from any who wish to do so. I am not shy, as you might have noticed, and I am also not afraid of a dissenting view. I might disagree with you, but I will defend your right to say what you think as well as I expect the same respect!

Why blog on this particular topic? Well after seeing the tactics of groups like the Discovery Institute, I couldn't stay silent on the subject. After the Discovery Institute spins their lies, after the defendants in the Dover trial LIED under oath, and after Texas fired their state science curriculum director for forwarding an email appropriate to her duties-- I couldn't sit back and just watch.

I don't filter any comments, with two exceptions. Comments that are nothing more than a link to some other website hawking some service or material will get deleted. Also any comment that is abusive or derogatory will also get deleted. To date (July 2016) I have had to delete very few service/material types and only one truly abusive comment!

Thanks.

About Me

I am a family man who works in Ohio, Information Technology and computer programming are my areas of expertise. For those of you who know me, growing grass in my backyard is obviously not, so quit laughing!
Why blog? In all honesty, why not? It's fun, has been very educational, and it also has offered me insights into people and positions I may not have thought much about before. (http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers)